There's a reason I haven't been writing. I cannot talk about it here. But I realized this gave me the opportunity to do what I knew would have to be done someday. Say goodbye.

But first, thank you. Thank you for listening to my words through your pixels. Thank you for coming along, whatever your reason, whoever you are. Thank you for watching my mystery unravel.

It's hard for me. To let this go. Seven years of my life are in these pages. A documented path from student to scientist. I'm not leaving because there's nothing to say, rather the opposite is true. There's so much that got left out from this summer, all those months I wasn't writing. A huge chunk of this is missing because of it, but that's the way it goes.

It wasn't always this way. Woohu was a community once. I thought of it more of a message board for my dorm and the group of friends I congealed with freshman year. One by one they left here, but I made a conscious decision to stay. Not for any particular reason, other than this became home. And I began to realize that all along, this journal, the memories buried in these pages, had been for me. To see growth flowing through words, representing actions, representing faith in myself.

And this became my memoir. My memoir of everything I lost and all that I gained. My winding road from those terrifying early moments in chemistry freshman year to a full-fledged forensic scientist in the NYPD. From being horrified to speak in front of room of classmates to testifying in courts of law to a jury of strangers. From bemoaning biochemical pathways and stoichiometry to analyzing mass spectral evidence.

When this journal began I was 18 years old. I was a wide-eyed freshman in college surrounded by strangers who would eventually become friends. I was dating a British boy back home, saw my parents every month or so, and thought I was going to become a biochemist. My first entry was made in playful angst as I fidgeted with my new life.

As this journal ends, I am 25 years old. A girl standing on her own two feet looking back and knowing how she got here, in large part to this very place where she could watch it unfold. This place took my experiences, often too close for me to see clearly, and let me take a step back and examine them to see them for what they were. Seven years later, I have a domestic partnership, a new group of friends, and a career in forensics. And my last entry is not in angst, but rather in wonder. This is to have succeeded. To end better than I began.

I didn't write everything here. There are a lot of things that happened to me, or I happened to them, that will never grace these pages. But what's here is my truth nonetheless. What's here was for me, and that makes it real.

I am not done writing forever. This has become ingrained in me and I had to make a conscious effort not to do it. Not because I have some sort of fantastic life that the internet needs to know about, but because life is something worth documenting even if just for myself. I will be found elsewhere, when I'm ready.

I am going to open back up a few of my last entries to give a sense of where I left off. These last two years had more loss, in the sense of people, than I have dealt with in the rest of my life combined. My life has undoubtedly changed because of it.

But in the end, thank you to the friends in Michigan, friends in New York, Jason, family members, a few coworkers, and a handful of strangers who read this. Thank you for finding this interesting enough to even have read it just once. Thank you for embracing yet another cell floating in the endless sea.

that night, a forest grew
summer is winding down, and i'll be back at school in about four days.

these past few months have been odd, and it feels like no time has gone by at all. i'm in a weird place, too -- my best friend's mother was murdered last week. the funeral was monday; the first funeral i've attended, and though i didn't go to the viewing, i still managed to see some of her and it was-- it was so horrible. i had to fight the urge to walk out of the church, certain that i couldn't go through with the rest of it.

she was just so empty.

it hurts to even think about.

the tropical storm hit today, though everyone tends to shrug off these things unless it's at least a category 2 or 3. after so many hurricanes i've become almost numb to the thought of them. the only people who are actually terrified of them are tourists caught on the tail-end of their vacation.

and in a few hours i'll finish doing the laundry and slowly begin packing up my things for next year. here's hoping it won't be as stressful as the last.

a change in the weather
leaving for new york in about thirty minutes. my parents, naturally, think i will die as soon as i step off the plane. their confidence in me is truly astounding.

things lately have felt as if i've just been waiting -- hanging by a thread on some unmade decision which i can't begin to imagine. and as soon as this decision is made, my life will take off for heights unknown.

i hear her heart beating loud as thunder
things i must remind myself of every day:
o1. the interstate is not the autobahn.
o2. not everyone understands doctor who references.
o3. you will not die in a freak car accident.
o4. eat breakfast. and lunch.
o5. you can do this. you can do this.

nineteen today. i feel amazing and loved and mature, mature, mature. i have an internship for which i must drive three hours every day, but i don't mind.

i'll burn a whole through you
standing next to him is like time traveling. one moment, we've just finished watching a film, and its barely grazing night. the next moment, i'm walking up to my dorm at 5.30 in the morning.

we held hands in his kitchen, and we were both very sleep-deprived and laughing, laughing, laughing. we're very good at it.

there's twenty-six steps to your door
i just spent the last three hours and fifteen minutes standing outside and talking to a boy whom i might really, really like. some of it may have to do with the fact that half the conversation isn't actually speech, it's just continuous laughter, loud and pealing like a pair of bells.

i've just finished reading the perks of being a wallflower. and i don't know how i feel about it, or myself, or if i should feel anything at all, or if i should write down all the ways i related to it, how much i found myself between the lines, or if i should be at least glad that i have felt infinite.

there was one paragraph where i almost had to just stop. just stop reading and look away or maybe just close my eyes for a few minutes to push down whatever feeling was swelling in my chest. it hit me in a desperate way and i was so connected to what he was saying that it scared me, just a little.

maybe it will mean something to you, maybe it will mean nothing. i only know that it meant something to me.

"I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who looked tired. Fathers in nice coats who looked even more tired. Kids working behind the counters of the food places who looked like they hadn't had the will to live for hours. The machines kept opening and closing. The people kept giving money and getting their change. And it all felt very unsettling to me."

there is a number of small things
listening to mum and letting the time traveler's wife take me far, far away. it's refreshing to be swept up in words, and my heart feels light when i think about it.

i am starting to feel like my life here has been infused with the twilight zone. everyone is being so, so nice to me lately, and three different boys go out of their way to say hello to me. a girl from down the hall grins when she sees me, and gives a small enthusiastic wave, asking how i am, and if my hand feels any better. (another story -- welding is fraught with peril, and i am left with second-degree burns on my right hand).

today i spent the day reading and cleaning and doing work and it's-- nice. my life feels organized; like i'm in charge of it. it's a new sensation, and somehow i feel as if the world is slowly unfurling for me, gently displaying new paths, and opportunities.

do you remember all the seconds you are away?
second semester is going far better than first. but i find myself harboring a large and unbridled disdain for people who were nearly friends. i'm quick to judge and bristle at anything that comes out of their mouths and seeing them just makes me sick, sick, sick.

i feel harsh and unlike the old me, but i feel like i deserve to be angry with them. maybe i do. maybe i don't. but i just can't take them anymore.

in other news, contemporary literature is my new love. we're doing fitzgerald and hemingway and emma kunz, and there is a way about these words that transports me to a familiar, foreign place where i can touch the edges of impossibility. i thoroughly enjoy it.

It is said quietly, listlessly, a new sort of indifference creeping into the corners of her voice where silent excitement used to reside. The stem between her fingers gives a delicate crunch as she twists it from the ground, and when she looks up the sky is blinding.

There are these quiet moments colored mustard in her memories, she knows, that edge in when she least expects. Squinting into blue light, its one of those times, and the green around her is cancelled out by the distant sounds of the past. She can't directly recall, but the fleeting familiarity isn't a new sensation and she lets it wash over her.

There is a pause, and the branches of a poplar creak a far way off, fat birds perching between the leaves. It's then that he says, "Did she ever get the chance?"
"Who?"
"Your mother. Did she ever get the chance?"
The girl and her companion stare at each other before she turns away, eyes lost in the petals of sunflowers, the brown center an earthy sunbather, the stem arching gracefully. "Maybe," she says, but it's lost in the breeze.

Her skin is warm and pink, and she's sure the hours have been slowly melting away from her, never to return, so she stands and brushes the backs of her thighs before turning away from him. It seems, lately, that this is her preferred stance and the thought is quickly lost as her peripheral picks him up in slow motion. His hair catches the light but she blinks the gold away.

::
2007 27 September :: 11.58pm
:: Mood: amused
:: Music: music of the spheres - the receiving end of sirens

my people were fair and had sky in their hair
there is so much running around here: early wake up call and then separate views of perspective, the study of the human as we are vain vain creatures and then --- oh. and then it's plunging, straight-forward, into the portrayal of the basic principles of design using the formal elements, visual literacy, a touch of 4d to transfer into and some sequential design studies of the universe.

it's bright and alive and wonderful.

i live in a building that has a ghost, with construction downstairs, and the way i get to class is down a fire escape. its hot and sticky outside, the kind of heat which is cloying and forever sticking to your skin, even after you've gotten indoors.

(which is not to say that the sleepless nights are bothering me still. they aren't. it's for good reasons anyway, so i suppose that's a change for the better.)

sometimes i will sit outside the library, on round stone benches with the sun blocked out by leaves, and that is when i will remember.

this, i will say to myself, this is what i've been waiting for. art school: a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic & interactive communication (+a minor in advertising?) at one of the best colleges, literally, on the planet.

stardust
she doesn't get what it all means, and sometimes it will slip through the gaps in her fingers, but then she will shake her head, and sigh, and her hands will tug at her jumper.

she's growing up in this place all over again, and suddenly little miss rosie has to worry about things like mortgages and carpets and doors, but any misplaced feeling that will bubble up inside will just get pushed down and down and down until she can almost not feel it anymore.

the thing is, she has words stuck in the back of her throat, waiting and waiting for the chance to be free from her mouth, but the silence will filter in and then it will melt into nothing.

sometimes late at night the phone will sing, and when she picks up the dial tone will hum loudly in her ear. she will wonder if it's some sort of mixed-up message, and then she will forget it by the next day. her life continues.

she travels, because it's better than the alternative, and that has to be enough. her hair is darker, and she is older, less angry. airports get to be routine and the pressure in her lungs when they lift off doesn't fade away until she will remember that this is her life, now, and she doesn't really need a home.

it's hard, but she moves on.

somewhere far away a voice crackles, disconnects, and the only sound left is a dead signal, speeding away into the night.